Creating the Lagoons

The creation of the Skokie Lagoons was one of the largest reclamation projects ever completed in the Chicago area. During the 1920s and 1930s, local and federal agencies dredged channels, straightened rivers, built levies, and constructed dams to improve navigation on the nation’s waterways, to prevent floods, and to provide irrigation water to arid lands in the West. The plan to construct the Skokie Lagoons was crafted and undertaken within this larger context. Like many other projects around the country, the vision for reclaiming the swamp proved too large and costly for local organizations to complete, so planners turned to the federal government for assistance. The purpose of the project aligned perfectly with the priorities of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program. In 1933, the Skokie Lagoons plan became a project of the Civilian Conservation Corps. Over the next eight years, hundreds of young men channeled the Skokie River into a series of lagoons and remade the swampy plain into a forest. The marsh that had outgrown its usefulness as a site for hunting and grazing became a place of recreation for the residents of Chicago and its suburbs.